


Moments

by FarFlungDreamer



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, WinterWidow BuckyNat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:47:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23713831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FarFlungDreamer/pseuds/FarFlungDreamer
Summary: Everyone is comprised of moments. Bucky thinks of the moments that led him here. A WinterWidow fluff piece, which connects the two of them in the MCU. Bucky/Nat, WinterWidow
Relationships: Buckynat, James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov
Kudos: 23





	Moments

He stared up at the darkened ceiling, still able to make out the edges of the beams above. Sleep wasn’t a companion of his often, so it wasn’t much of a surprise. Usually the things he contemplated in the dark, where too horrific to name, but tonight… his thoughts moved along a different direction. Sometimes, when the ghosts weren’t so bad he found himself thinking deeply of what things meant. Contemplating the bigger questions his… situation had made him take notice of.

What was he made of? People… were made of certain things. That’s how they could be broken, because they were made of something that could be. They were comprised of  _ moments _ , really. That was all. Specific events that struck clear through the muck of daily life, swift as a bullet and signaled a hard shift. Perhaps that was how things worked… or maybe it was just because he thought so much. Always overthinking a next move, always calculating his surroundings.

_ 'Well… not always,' _ he thought bitterly. He used to be different. In hazy, far off memories, that were harder to pull forward. Like a grainy picture, hazier than any of the War or Russia. But, if he concentrated, he could pull it forward. It was then he was reminded of the carefree, charming James Buchanan Barnes. Always an easy smile, always a witty response, the perfect line easily came to mind. Only then, though, in those foggy memories of his earliest life did he remember what it had been to be carefree. Everything else was different. So different that he could no longer connect to that man. James Buchanan Barnes was too different from the rest of his life.

_ Bucky _ ; after an altered Steve saved them all from that Nazi infested  _ shitshow... _ saved him from Zola's torture, was different.

_ Bucky _ ; during the war with the commando's, fighting the good fight yet still taking more lives than they cared to talk about, was different.

The  _ Winter Soldier  _ too, was different. Those were differences he didn't want to think about.

Whoever  _ he  _ was  _ now _ , was  _ very  _ different too. The result of so many different lives colliding at once and then scooped up in the aftermath. A man piled together and rethought. He felt like the farthest possible version of that young man.

These moments stood out to him as he thought along the question that was plaguing his mind. This **one** _itching_ question, keeping him sleepless. Sleepless in a way that was so far from the usual path he followed when his head fell to his pillow.

His dark eyes fell slowly, and cut through the darkness to lap up the vibrant red that seemed to deny the darkness any perch. Its color was easy to see, even in the dark, he felt. The soft lines that peeked from underneath it. They all begged him for the answer to his question.

Who was it lying here now? How was it that that person had her,  _ here _ , with him? Wrapped so soundly in his arms, her breathes light and sweet as she fell into sleep, which evaded him. It seemed ridiculous. He couldn't help but still stare down at the silky red strands that twisted around her shoulders and splayed across the pillow in spiderwebs. So enticing… he pressed a soft kiss to her hair. He didn't want to wake her but… every moment was easily taken away in the next. He knew that too.

He moved his eyes back up to the ceiling, and decided maybe if he weren't looking at her he'd have more clarity on the subject. Blank moments followed, no answers were provided in the darkness either. His eyes soon drifted back over her, to take her in. He decided why waste time looking at a dingy old ceiling when she was with him? Those moments he felt were right there, suddenly, so easy to see as his eyes swept over her again.

When he'd gotten out of cryo, thanks to the King and Shuri, Steve's doubtless endless hours of study. Even Sam seemed to have clocked in on the effort to bring Bucky out of cryo and into the world without past influences, his mind resolutely his own. No longer a danger, he could fight in his own right. No more triggers, no more bad connections that pushed his mind there.

Steve, of course, had been overjoyed, and although they didn't rush right into anything, the time came when Bucky and Steve had to leave Wakanda. After some time talking, mostly many hours of thinking on his part, Bucky agreed to join the secretive version of the Avengers with Steve. Not because he wanted to. Only a slight part of him because it meant so much to his friend to have Bucky back at his side. Mostly… because it seemed like maybe it was the path. The way to the redemption he'd been looking for since he found something human within himself again.

It wasn't easy, though. Steve had assured him endlessly about all his teammates. That they didn't blame him for what he'd done when some of them last fought. Bucky didn't have the heart to tell Steve they couldn't be blamed if they did think of him that way. He'd been the 'villain' of more stories than he cared to remember. Steve was just too stubborn to see anything other than his friend Bucky.

A large, but always unspoken part of him decided that he liked to believe that the good old captain wasn't as much of a moron as he usually was. That he could simply see the truth that Bucky couldn't accept. It was a small hope that he guiltily let himself have.

The truth was, everyone was a mixed review. Sometimes he got fear, sometimes confusion… pity every once in awhile. He had hated pity the most. He wasn't looking for someone to feel sorry for him, he wanted no part of it. No part of him felt he deserved it. Eventually he'd find them at one point or another with a sidelong glance, when an awkward question might arise, when his mind slipped away in a memory, or he knew something he shouldn’t.

The hardest times were when something might hit him. A word sometimes, a string of conversation that pulled a long since hidden memory whirling forward enough it threw him off outwards as well as inward. With Steve it was one thing, he sat quietly and waited for Bucky to come around, or he'd interrupt with some quick humor and an old, comfortable story.

But with the other Avengers, what he received in these rare but slightly vulnerable states, was mixed reviews. Mostly they felt concerned for him. It burned Bucky up inside. As his guarded eyes always slipped through the group, purposefully trying to ignore the slips… something different stood out at times. Each and every one of the people working with Steve had these reactions... save one.

The Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff, that was. She sat with the others, relaxed, but when his eyes slipped past hers evaluating, he saw none of the pity or concern in her own eyes that was pouring off her fellow teammates. It wasn't distaste or spite, either. It wasn't Steve's shielded concern and optimistic ideas that it would all slip into the past.

Instead he saw there… an understanding, of sorts? Maybe it was simply her face to the world, the Black Widow had confidence in heaps and bounds. Still she had a knowing sort of look, as if she could read his mind and know exactly how it had all come up. Why he was unsteady in some small room, suddenly, and quick to hide it from all but Steve's careful watch. Hers too, apparently.

It had confused him many times, when guarded looks slipped from his face for just a moment, a small smile might light her face before she was pulled into a ice breaking conversation. He hadn’t been sure what it was supposed to mean, but he chose to ignore it then.

Those moments had not been the only ones. Never did he find pity in Natasha's stare, never did he hear her excuse his past crimes. Never did he find her taking it easy on him for no real reason. Natasha had been through a lot, too, Steve had said. He wouldn't remember until later.

That was a moment. When he did remember, when he realized there was another section of him hidden away. Another version of him lost in time and his memories. When he'd finally pieced it together, why he felt he knew the Black Widow so much, Bucky had been shocked. Her knowing looks or swift acknowledgments suddenly seemed so clear. Like the river clearing after the rain stopped pelting it, disrupting its image.

He remembered all his moments as the Winter Soldier, they filter in like all the rest, but haunted his subconscious whenever or wherever his eyes shut. There were too many things to keep straight, information, sources, weapons, time period, how long he'd been out of cryo, missions, people, targets… so much that all taunted him and sometimes became confusing and mixed up.

There was one 'mission' he had forgotten. Since remembering it, he never seemed to be able to mix up. It all stood in perfect clarity now, something he was happy about for once. The Soldier's time commanding and training over those who were chosen to enter and train within the Red Room organization. Russia's elite spy program naturally brought their prized possession out of his sleep to make sure they were being trained in all the ways Mother Russia wanted.

A younger Natalia Romanova, the top student, motivated to surpass all expectations and clearly capable of it at the time, trained under him. She was all the things they looked for. Motivated, deadly, controlled, loyal to the cause, absolutely gorgeous… but there was a curiosity that somehow survived the training. The technique's, the very life of the Red Room Program. How could anyone, even a brainwashed assassin, resist someone like that?

The memories of their time together, when they began to tumble together in complete secrecy, both shadows of the person they'd evolved into now. For Natalia, that was a good thing, she'd grown more amazing since he'd met her in her youth. For him… well, he couldn't tell anyone the difference some days. Some days he decided he was better than he had been too. Natasha told him he was, and he took her word some days.

It had been tucked away in his memories, like everything else. But the one thing that seemed to make it stick out in such clarity now was… well, what it brought about in him. Natalia had not only brought The Soldier into a world without commands for a short time, where he fell into a semblance of free will… she'd somehow managed to slip through him. Right down to his very core and elicit a flame in that part of him that could still  _ feel _ .

The Winter Soldier had never known what it was like to feel things, as he did with her. To embrace such a human urge, that he worked around his orders to sneak time to be with her. Often, and sometimes recklessly. It was brand new and mysterious. Often confusing.

Natalia had found this small shard of James Bucky Barnes that had been left intact, even if he didn't know it at the time. It would be burned out, along with any memory of her, as all had been before, and all would be again. Almost... but they could never get it all, not completely and their machine couldn't burn away a feeling. That's why these memories stood out with such clarity, he could still feel it all, even now.

Even remembering the past, he didn’t know how it brought the two of them here. Together again… and for all his thinking and wondering, he couldn’t put a pin in who exactly laid here with her. Was it him? Or a dozen other parts of him? Who was it that managed to bring her here with him? Because it felt like all parts of him were rushed with this intoxicating feeling, of being so alive, when she was near him. It was perhaps the first unified part of him since his nightmare began.

He glanced down, his thoughts broken as Natasha twisted in her sleep to face him and drape a leg across his own. His eyes wander over to the red clock that flashed the numbers glaringly at the bedside table.

Natasha. She still somehow managed to pull up all the human parts of him with ease, and when he was with her… it was never a struggle to fight decades worth of instincts and muscle memory. He just was.

His eyes grew heavier and heavier and at least sleep started to claim Bucky's mind, now filled with thoughts of the woman in his arms. Her scent, the feel of her, the way she tugged at his very essence even when he had his own back. Perhaps it was just proof that he was only one man… he just had many more stark moments than most. He knew which moments meant the most to him, here, and maybe that could be enough of an answer. Sleep threatened him and he leaned his head into hers.

"I love you," He muttered softly into her hair as he drifted off into the dark. His arm never loosened from around her waist.


End file.
